青画廊于1990年由Mario Cristiani/ Lorenzo Fiaschi和Maurizio Rigillo在意大利创办。创始人独树一帜，将画廊选址在保留着中古世纪风貌的小城圣吉米那诺，远离都市和城市中心，其建筑前身是一座旧式影院。常青画廊一直致力于时代的延续性，渴望参与书写承前启后的当代创意行为的诗篇。2004年北京常青画廊的成立起到了非常重要的文化桥梁作用，它为艺术爱好者提供了欣赏国际艺术大师作品的机会，这些作品由艺术家们特别为画廊创作并投射出他们的艺术经历。这是一个双重的挑战：一方面外国艺术家要在中国这样一个特别的地方展示作品；另一方面参观者则要冒险进入一种非常不同的文化领地。

San Gimignano, a contemporary art gallery in the heart of Tuscany

Galleria Continua opened in San Gimignano (Italy) in 1990, the result of the initiative of three friends: Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo. Occupying a former cinema, Galleria Continua established itself and thrived in an entirely unexpected location, away from the big cities and the ultramodern urban centres, in a town – San Gimignano – steeped in history, timeless, magnificent. This choice of location provided scope for the development of new forms of dialogue and symbiosis between unexpected geographies: rural and industrial, local and global, art from the past and the art of today, famous artists and emerging ones. The gallery’s presence in an area that is in a certain sense “forgotten” but which has a spirit and significant history of its own, has enabled it to create a reputation as a centre capable of producing exciting and challenging contemporary work where it is least expected, unhampered by the spatial and temporal restrictions of classic contemporary art institutions. Remaining faithful to a spirit of perpetual evolution and committed to interesting as broad a public as possible in contemporary art, in the course of twenty years Galleria Continua has created a strong identity for itself through its ties and experiences. That identity is grounded in two values – generosity and altruism – which lie at the heart of all its dealings with artists, the general public and its development as a whole. Galleria Continua is all about a desire for continuity between ages, the aspiration to having a part in writing the history of the present, a history that is sensitive to contemporary creative practices and which cherishes the link between past and future, and between different and unusual individuals and geographies.

Beijing, a pioneering contemporary art gallery in China

In keeping with the constantly evolving nature of the gallery and its desire to address as wide a public as possible, in 2005 Galleria Continua opened a new exhibition space in Beijing, China, the aim being to promote international contemporary art in a nation where it is little seen and to encourage new forms of cultural exchange. Galleria Continua Beijing performs a particularly intense cultural mediation role, offering Chinese art-lovers the chance to visit exhibitions in which international-level artists devise projects specifically for the gallery space and reflect upon their experiences. It is a twofold challenge: for the foreign artist, who is exhibiting in China in a rather particular venue; and for the visitor, who is venturing into very different cultural territory.

The gallery’s interest in China arose principally as a result of its solid ties of friendship with Chen Zhen and Xu Min. In April 2004 Galleria Continua participated in the first contemporary art fair in Beijing. Then, in November of the same year, the gallery hosted its first visitors to present them its project in the 798 Art District (the former 798 Factory), a reconverted industrial zone occupied by artists, gallery owners and art lovers. The premises taken over by the gallery (1,000 m2 and 13 metres high) had not yet been restored, and its 1950s Bauhaus style was intact. This style is preserved even after the renovation works. In May 2005 Galleria Continua held its inaugural show in the new space, featuring 16 artists from five continents. At the time it was one of the few initiatives to be organized by a Western gallery in China. Since then there have been exhibitions of the work of Chen Zhen, Daniel Buren, Loris Cecchini, Lucy + Jorge Orta, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Anish Kapoor and Kendell Geers plus various other projects, monographic and group shows. The space has become an exciting venue for presenting artists from around the world, all the more remarkable given the comparative rarity of such ventures on the part of Western galleries. The underlying thread of Galleria Continua’s activities in Beijing, as it is in San Gimignano, is to discover new artists and to provide showcases that bring together spheres of creativity and various different cultures.

Artists include:

Ai Weiwei

Kader Attia

Daniel Buren

Cai Guo-Qiang

Loris Cecchini

Chen Zhen

Nikhil Chopra

Berlinde De Bruyckere

Leandro Erlich

Meschac Gaba

Carlos Garaicoa

Kendell Geers

Antony Gormley

Gu Dexin

Shilpa Gupta

Subodh Gupta

Mona Hatoum

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov

Kan Xuan

Anish Kapoor

Kimsooja

Jorge Macchi

Sabrina Mezzaqui

Margherita Morgantin

Moataz Nasr

Hans Op de Beeck

Lucy + Jorge Orta

Giovanni Ozzola

Luca Pancrazzi

Bruno Peinado

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Arcangelo Sassolino

Serse

Nedko Solakov

Sun Yuan & Peng Yu

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Nari Ward

Sophie Whettnall

Sislej Xhafa

Yan Lei